Your say / International Women's Day
‘It’s time for us all to rise up, link hands and smash the patriarchy’
International Women’s Day is a difficult day for me, a trans woman who isn’t naive enough to believe society accepts me fully as the woman I know myself to have become. “Post-op”, but still partially trapped within.
How thankful I am, however, to have had the freedom and opportunity to be. To live in relative peace and safety.
I think of our sisters thousands of miles away in Afghanistan.
is needed now More than ever
Tears roll down my heavily made up face as I reflect on the sheer terror I feel in my soul about the violence inflicted upon women in villages, towns and cities across Afghanistan by the Taliban.
In January, hundreds marched across the city in support of women’s rights in the UK and across the world
These mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, wives free not even to stand in front of an open window and feel the softness of a breeze fleeting across their faces if they have the misfortune of living in a property overlooked by another.
The tyrannical Taliban regime has not only cracked down on women uttering a few words to one another when out and about – preventing them from experiencing the solidarity that all of us women have at some point experienced – but they are now also denied the simple luxury that a window affords.
The Taliban have ordered that no windows be built in new residential buildings that overlook areas used by women.
A Taliban spokesperson said: “Seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obscene acts.”
The lack of a window is a striking metaphor, if there ever was one, depicting the brutal clamp down on the very basic freedoms of women in a country, frankly, spared entirely from the mercy, tolerance and compassion of a loving God.
March 8 marks UN International Women’s Day
The tears continue to pour down as I reflect on my own position, albeit trivial in comparison to the plight of women in Palestine and Afghanistan to name but a few places utterly devastated by men sewing the seeds of division and wielding weapons.
I reflect on the baffled looks on the faces of people I occasionally encounter. Their eyes frantically flitting between the pair of breasts, the deep voice, the breasts, the voice…their nervousness, and mine, rising by the second!
Then the tears stop. I’m angry!
We live in an age where you have to be trans enough to be accepted as a woman if you’re a trans woman.
Anti-trans feminists on the one hand reject traditional gender roles and associated stereotypes (and rightly so!), but on the other measure trans women against those very standards. Ridiculing and ostracising those who are unable to conform.
But that alone doesn’t make me angry.
It’s the injustice that trans girls in this country face that fuels the fires of anger rising up within me; puberty blockers for trans kids banned!
Banned!
Health Secretary Wes Streeting confirmed in December that under-18s questioning their gender identity will be permanently banned from accessing puberty blockers
Trans girls, the trans women of tomorrow, forced to endure up to eight long years of male puberty in the hope they’ll “grow out of it”.
If they’re anything like me, Mr Streeting, who, like yourself, grew up and went to school during Section 28, Thatcher-era legislation which denied gender and sexuality questioning kids access to pastoral support, they won’t grow out of it.
They will grow and become who they are in spite of you.
If they are lucky, like I’ve been, and do manage to make it, they’ll be unlikely to forgive you or your party, just like I refuse to forgive the Conservatives!
So, what International Women’s Day 2025 has symbolised for me is that we ALL very much still live under the cosh of the patriarchy.
It’s time for us all to rise up, link hands and smash the patriarchy!
Now! Now more than ever!
This is an opinion piece by Liv Fortune, a Montpelier resident
All photos: Rob Browne
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